Feature request: Enable case-insensitive reverse-search-history (C-r)

[A M]

Hello, I would like to make a feature request/suggestion on Bash. (I was 
told submitting to this mailing list was the right way to do it.)


Feature request: Enable reverse-search-history (C-r) to be case-insensitive.

Currently reverse-search-history is case-sensitive and cannot be changed 
to be insensitive. As the evolution of Bash has progressed, more and 
more functions have gotten the ability to be case-insensitive, but this 
is a function that remains it seems.


It would be nice to have this functionality.

Best Regards
Alex

Feature request: Enable possibility of colored stderr output

[A M]

Hello, I would like to submit a feature request/suggestion on Bash. (I 
was told submitting to this mailing list was the right way to do it.)


Feature request: Enable possibility of colored stderr output.

It would be really neat to have functionality that stderr could be 
output in a different color compared to stdout. It could be argued that 
this feature would improve readability of terminal output by 
differentiating stdout and stderr through colorization.


Below are links to some discussions/articles on stderr colorization, I 
include them as examples of the interest/demand for this functionality:


https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6841143/how-to-set-font-color-for-stdout-and-stderr
https://serverfault.com/questions/59262/bash-print-stderr-in-red-color
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shell-tips-finally-colorized-stderr-stdout-john-boero
https://www.unix.com/unix-for-advanced-and-expert-users/164110-how-set-font-color-stdin-stdout-stderr.html

Best Regards
Alex

Re: Feature request: Enable possibility of colored stderr output

[A M]

Hello. Thanks everyone for explaining that Bash can't have effect on 
other processes stderr.


Chet, yes I certainly think it would be a good feature enabling more 
colorization in Bash's own output. About the other types of information 
you pointed out I think that's a good idea to consider them too.


Just to be clear: I am not giving any opinion on whether this feature 
should be enabled by default or not, just that the possibility exist for 
the user to choose to use or not.


As I briefly mentioned in my first email, using colorization to 
differentiate different types of messages could improve readability of 
the terminal and be helpful for the user.
I hope it seems fairly apparent to most people that if you have a body 
of text, if certain parts of the text, like errors and warnings, are in 
a different color than the "normal" text, that would result in the text 
being more readable as opposed to if all the text were just in a single 
color and no other methods were used to distinguish.


I have not researched the topic more in depth but I think it would be 
easy to do some searching online and finding various results, like 
studies on methods for improving the presentation of information.


Here is just something I found by a quick search:
https://blog.prototypr.io/effective-color-coding-bb83d698acb2?gi=dc87d4a4b1ae
"This research finds that color coding has an important effect on 
improving information acquisition and memory. People have a limited 
capacity for processing information and visual stimuli. Color helps us 
categorize the instructional stimuli we are presented with."


Best Regards
Alex

On 9/14/20 3:52 PM, Chet Ramey wrote:

On 9/13/20 5:59 AM, A M wrote:

Hello, I would like to submit a feature request/suggestion on Bash. (I was
told submitting to this mailing list was the right way to do it.)

Feature request: Enable possibility of colored stderr output.

Let's separate the two cases: bash coloring its own output to stderr, which
is usually warnings and errors, and output to stderr by processes bash runs.

We can discard the latter case right away -- bash doesn't, and shouldn't,
have any effect on another process's stderr other than redirecting it.
That's something that should be left to the other process. If you really
want it, you can do things outside of bash itself to achieve it.

The first case is different: would there be any advantage to having bash
color its own error messages? And how about other information that gets
printed to stderr, like warnings or job status messages?